Photo Flash: THE ENTERTAINER Runs At The Studio Theatre Through 9/20

"You've been a good audience ... a very good audience. Let me know where you're working tomorrow night - and I'll come and see YOU." These are the words of music hall performer Archie Rice - the centre of this play by theatre's original Angry Young Man, playwright John Osborne. Written in 1957, it was the second play by Osborne and like his first play, Look Back in Anger, portrayed an England in crisis by a playwright of the post-Noël Coward and Terence Rattigan generation. His characters were often working class and their anger and the view of England they expressed on stage were unlike anything audiences had seen before.

A brilliant exposé of 1950s postwar England seen through the eyes of fading music hall performer, Archie Rice. As we veer from gin-soaked family arguments to Archie's increasingly desperate onstage turns, an England on a precipice is revealed, a nation unable to find its place in what is clearly a new world.

This production of The Entertainer deliberately steps outside of the Shaw Festival's mandate representing a continuum of provocative playwrighting that includes Shaw, Noël Coward and now John Osborne. This production will be directed by Artistic Director Jackie Maxwell and features Benedict Campbell as Archie Rice.

Running time is approximately 3 hours with two intermissions.

Photo Credit: Emily Cooper

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